Someone has to speak up for the fans. We have to remind foreign owners that our clubs are like families, not gambling joints
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown on why football must have a regulator. And he won’t rule himself out of the job!
GORDON BROWN has an office on the top floor of his home. It is a beautiful room with sweeping views of rugged countryside and the Firth of Forth. Only two frames hang on its walls. Neither holds a photo of the ex-Prime Minister with former US president Barack Obama. Nor do they contain pictures of him hosting the G20 summit or standing at a lectern in Downing Street.
One frame holds a rugby jersey in yellow and navy hoops, the jersey he wore as a teenager when he played for Kirkcaldy High School in the Sixties. ‘I will never forget the first try I scored for the school first XV,’ he said some years ago. ‘I can still remember kicking that ball ahead in terrible weather and scoring the try that won the match. You never forget those moments.’
The other displays a photo of Jim Baxter, the brilliant Scotland midfielder who began his career with Brown’s home-town team, Raith Rovers, in the late 1950s and remains the greatest player the former Labour leader has ever seen north of the border.
Some politicians attach themselves to sport, and particularly football, in an attempt to make themselves more electable. It is an easy nod to populism and a tactic that often comes unstuck at the first hint of gentle inquiry. Brown is not like that. He has never been like that. We have grown cynical about politicians’ motives for supporting pretty much anything but Brown’s sporting credentials are beyond cynicism.
He sold programmes outside Stark’s Park in Kirkcaldy when he was a boy because he could not afford the admission fee to watch his beloved Raith Rovers and it allowed him to get in to the stadium — after kick-off but for free. He has supported them his whole life. He has a passion for sport so fierce it sometimes takes others by surprise. In a world of smoke and mirrors, Brown still stands as someone unusual because he is genuine.
IT is not a surprise that he has been a long-standing and prominent supporter of the idea that English football should be overseen by an independent regulator to protect it from the avaricious intentions of leading Premier League club owners like the Glazer family, at Manchester United, and Fenway Sports
Group, at Liverpool, who led plans for a breakaway European Super League in April 2021 that would have destroyed the fabric of our game.
The public anger inflamed by those plans prompted the Government to commission a report into the state of the game. Former Sports Minister and Conservative MP Tracey Crouch chaired the review, which concluded that football needed a regulator. The idea appeared to be destined for the long grass when
Liz Truss took over as Prime Minister but her swift demise breathed new life into it and it is now thought it has been approved by Rishi Sunak.
There are hopes the Government will present its White Paper on the issue, the first step to enshrining an independent regulator for English football in law, in the weeks ahead and if the legislation is passed in the next 12 months, it will establish 2023 as a landmark year in the history of the game.
It will mark a revolution, a shift in power away from billionaire owners towards the fans and perhaps a fairer distribution of TV money between the top flight and the lower leagues. It will represent the biggest change to football in this country since the formation of the Premier League in 1992.
There are some who argue that the collapse of the ESL and recent legal developments that make it less likely it will be resurrected, coupled with the proposed sales of United and Liverpool by the Glazers and FSG respectively, have diminished the need for an independent regulator.
The Premier League, in particular, is still desperate to quash the plan. Brown, though, is adamant the game needs the regulator more than ever. ‘Some people say there’s less need for a regulator now that the Glazers and FSG are selling up,’ says Brown, ‘but it’s the other way around.
Both those clubs are likely to be bought by other owners from abroad and the more that foreign ownership becomes the biggest feature of the most successful league in the world, the more careful we have to be about how things are managed. ‘Fans feel that with the attempted Super League breakaway, things almost went outside their control. We have to get a regulator to formalise the idea of a Golden Share for supporters to protect their club’s name and heritage and to introduce better financial checks and balances.
‘Otherwise, the game will move further away from its original purpose of being part of a network of people at the grass roots supporting football and instead become a money-making exercise for a few billionaires. The key thing with the regulator is that it must happen in 2023, not wait for ages until things get worse. I have seen it written that it is going to happen in 2023 but we have to be vigilant and make sure it does happen because there are vested interests who do not want it to happen.
‘The regulator should be publishing regular reports about the state of football and why money
There should be reports on why cash is not cascading to lower leagues
is not cascading down in to the rest of the game. The regulator would have an influence over the kind of people that would be welcomed into football. Premier League clubs might become less attractive to predatory owners if they know they have to make more payments to the pyramid. The regulator has to represent the supporters. Someone has to stand up for the supporters.’
There are many, myself included, who feel that Brown would represent the ideal figure to be the game’s first independent regulator in this country. He is, of course, a former and widely respected Chancellor of the Exchequer so his fiscal qualifications could hardly come any higher. He has dealt with the most powerful men in the world so he would not be in thrall to the Premier League’s big shots.
Most importantly, perhaps, he loves the game. He was brought up with the game and he has lived his whole life supporting his local football club. At a time when English football gives the impression it needs supporters less and less, Brown would be a champion of the fans and of the idea that clubs need to have closer ties with their communities.
He is robustly non-committal when I put to him the idea he would be the perfect candidate. It would be hard to get much more independent than having a Scot in charge of the English game, after all. Brown smiles at that idea. ‘I think it will be someone within the English football system,’ he says and moves quickly on.
Brown does have a view, though, on what the independent regulator should look like. He dismisses the fear straight away that he or she would be a puppet of the government of the day and points out that, as American ownership in the Premier League continues to grow, there is more need than ever to safeguard against English football being twisted into a Frankenstein’s monster of closed leagues and All Star Games.
‘I have never thought of the regulator as the Government telling people what to do,’ says Brown. ‘I have always thought of the regulator as speaking for the supporters. I don’t think you should think of the regulator as someone who is chosen by the Government to do what the Government wants. You have got to think of the regulator as someone who is speaking for supporters and who is chosen because they are the voice of the fans. Nobody is saying the Government should choose the regulator. We are saying an independent panel should choose.
‘The regulator will be someone who has an appreciation of the game continuing beyond this ownership or that ownership and building for the future. I keep coming back to the pyramid because it’s important to understand the relationship between the grass roots and the lower leagues and the Premier League.
‘Many of the people coming into football from abroad are only interested in the Premier League but the Premier League only thrives because we have so much commitment and voluntary effort going on at the grassroots. No matter what surrounds him or her, you have to think of the regulator as an individual you can go to. The back-up for that person could be a whole series of different advisory groups involving supporters but certainly not government officials. The regulator has to be independent of government.
‘It is someone to speak up for the long-term interests of the game that is not influenced by the short-term greed or grievances of particular clubs. The work of the regulator is not to destroy the possibility of clubs being profitable but to make sure that the interests of the game in the long term and of supporters are not ignored.’
Brown is concerned that the influx of American owners will continue and that there is still a possibility that one form or another of a European Super League idea could be resuscitated if legislation for a regulator is not passed soon.
‘Half the Premier League is part-owned or fully owned by American billionaires,’ says Brown, ‘and with the pound now closer to the level of the dollar and British takeovers possible at knockdown prices, more US billionaires are going to be moving in for the kill.
‘The American invasion is not restricted to football. Householdname companies like Morrisons, Ladbrokes, Coral, GKN and Smiths Medical now trade as US-owned businesses. Big new high-tech firms like Meggitt and Ultra Electronics have been snapped up too. For American billionaires, it’s like winning the lottery, because with the pound down 20 per cent in just a year they are buying at what, for them, look like bargain basement prices.
‘The Americans are not alone in snapping up Premier League clubs. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund now owns Newcastle and the United Arab Emirates-based Abu Dhabi United Group are now registering huge profits at Manchester City. For them, clubs are trophy prizes and sportswashing tools, but for the Americans, the allure of football is about one thing and one thing only: money.
‘In all areas of commercial life, there is a new demand that if a business is to make profits, it must show greater social purpose. And in no area should that be more entrenched than in football, where community links and social responsibility have been the basis of its expansion for over 150 years.
‘So, let’s remind people who care about our football that clubs are like families, not like casinos or gambling joints. Football clubs are places where, at their best, people come together, cultivate teamwork, build team spirit, find role models, and celebrate all that a community has in common. That is something that is worth preserving and the best way of preserving it is by continuing to press for the independent regulator.’
The allure of football is about one thing and one thing only: money