STAR Governance Bill Survey – Nov 2024

As many of you would have heard, the new Football Governance Bill was published last month, which can be found here.

Having seen first-hand the consequences of poor ownership and football’s inability to regulate itself, the Supporters’ Trust at Reading are keen to put their stamp on the Bill.

We have already gathered some of our thoughts after reading the new Bill and are delighted to say that a number of improvements have been made on the previous version:

• Fan engagement on ticket pricing and home relocation has now been mandated
• The Regulator will no longer be required to consider the foreign and trade policy of the government when deciding whether to approve club takeovers
• The Regulator will have the power to force clubs to democratically select the fans they engage with, which is a big step forward for fan engagement

However, we will always push for better and there are a number of areas where the Bill can be strengthened, in our view.

We strongly believe STAR’s priorities for the Bill are:

• Establish more mechanisms to protect clubs if owners “pull the rug”
  • This is crucial to ensure clubs don’t collapse when owners decide to jump ship without a new custodian in place or leave them short of cash. Reading FC have experienced this on multiple occasions.
• Strengthened Owners’ and Directors’ Test
  • A whistleblower route through to the IFR should be established for Supporters’ Trusts, the Football Supporters’ Associations and other groups of people, who may have serious concerns about their current or potential future owner(s)
  • The IFR must also take steps to ban potential future owners who live, do business or store money in certain countries that either:
    • Put or are likely to put limits on funds that can be transferred to the UK; or
    • Prevent, either intentionally or unintentionally, the possibility of IFR and competitions from doing proper and effective due diligence in their nation.
• The removal of owners
  • Currently, owners can’t be forced to sell a club, even if they are disqualified. This means there are no real safety nets for clubs at the hands of owners who, intentionally or unintentionally, have run them into the ground. The IFR must have the power to remove owners.
• Expansion of asset protection
  • Asset protection should extend to other club owned assets, particularly the training grounds, but not limited to include other property (e.g. car parks, hotels, and other land).
  • The Bearwood training ground saga in March 2024 reinforces the need for all assets to be protected.

All of these issues have or are affecting Reading FC – and we believe these four items should be near the top of our priority list to put forward to politicians.

It’s now your turn to have your say and we would appreciate it if you could fill out our fairly short survey, which can be found here – Governance Bill Survey

Not only are we quizzing you on whether you feel STAR’s priorities above are right, but also on what else we should prioritise when putting forward our suggestions to politicians. 

We will ask you about the following items:

• Ticket prices
  • STAR would suggest:
    • A cap on away ticket prices in the EFL
    • Concessionary tickets to be mandated to ensure all age groups have the best opportunity to attend matches
    • Measures to be put in place to prevent clubs from adopting a “dynamic” ticket pricing strategy
• Distribution of money in the English football pyramid
  • We are pleased to see parachute payments are within scope of financing distribution. However, we recognise that the footballing landscape continues to evolve.
  • All income relating to media – be that deals with traditional outlets, streaming services or directly made by clubs should be considered within scope.
  • For the first report, the IFR should consider financial distribution, both within and across leagues, to ensure these are not harming competitiveness of the game alongside ensuring club survival and propose alternative mechanisms to redress this balance.
• The Golden Share
  • A Golden Share would provide supporters’ trusts with a minority stake in their clubs
    • This enables the Trust to consider taking legal action against the club which currently does not exist (request to the court for injunctions, derivative actions, share sale orders, or winding-up orders, which are safeguarding measures for Trusts to enact in instances of an existential crisis).
• Domestic games being played abroad
  • We believe a competitive domestic game in England and Wales should never be played abroad – and we would be keen to see this specifically mentioned within the Bill.
• Further improvements to fan engagement – we believe:
  • Minimum levels of fan engagement should exist and this should be able to be measured numerically
  • Trusts should be able to access both financial information and information relating to the strategic intent of clubs to ensure that the long term viability of clubs are being considered within their actions.
  • The IFR should be empowered to hold relationships with Trusts (under NDA if required) to ensure that they are able to provide pre-release access to information under embargo that affects clubs and enable the Trusts to prepare responses accordingly. 

The results of this survey, which will close at 5pm on Monday 11th November, will be used to enhance the document that we will be sending to politicians and the media, detailing our concerns and suggestions regarding the Bill. This document will also be shared with fans.

The Football Governance Bill has already had its first reading in the House of Lords and we aim to keep members updated on key dates regarding the Bill via the STAR’s weekly newsletter.